Design and Analysis of a Microgripper Based on Smart Materials

Smart materials are a group of solid-state materials whose geometric shape can be related to an energy input in the form of heat, light, electric field, or magnetic field. In the application of active materials to electromechanical energy conversion, electrical energy may be input to the material and the resulting deformation of the material can be used to move a load. The most common smart materials are piezoelectrics, magnetostrictive, and SMAs. In this paper, a microgripper is designed based right angle flexure hinge and driven through piezoelectric ceramic stack. The calculation formulas of amplifying ratio and natural frequency of the microgripper structure were derived. From the analysis, the maximum stress is 147Mpa that under the allowable stress of 65Mn. It can work in a stable status. The results indicate that, the microgripper all are satisfy the need of design